Official High Elf Discussion Megathread

[matrix123mko]

Then Nightborne are just Horde plot devices for portals and 'oh look ancient elven stuff and magic!'.

I'm so smart eksdee.

Oh wait, *Checks the 'plot devices'* did we got usurped? O_o Did the Blood elves got damaged beyond repair by Nightborne!?!? o_O

Not beyond repair. They should just be considered additional elf colour option.

[Aldo Hawk]

Not beyond repair. They should just be considered additional elf colour option.

B-But I'm the portal b0i...

Well, I don't really like to be the portal boy but I am the portal boy, and you ain't taking it from me!

[Maxilian]

Oh wait, *Checks the 'plot devices'* did we got usurped? O_o Did the Blood elves got damaged beyond repair by Nightborne!?!? o_O

To be fair, in the long run, i see the NB as an addition to the BE and viceversa.

[Aldo Hawk]

To be fair, in the long run, i see the NB as an addition to the BE and viceversa.

Same here, I think they could have never made better allies for the Blood elves than Nightborne, they look so nice together! <3

It also brings a cool balance between parallel societies with themes of day and night, it's beautiful.

[Obelisk Kai]

I don't think Occam's Razor applies quite in the way you present here. I mean you're claiming that either none of them accompanied the mission despite the danger, or that they were eaten by their compatriots due to lack of supplies? I don't think either of these examples seem plausible on the face of it, the first because it just doesn't demographically pan out (unless there's some form of internalized prejudice in Kul Tiras involved the larger or stockier members of their society that we've yet to hear of). The second because, well, if the Kul Tiran expeditionary forces had become cannibals in the interim you'd think this is something we'd heard of. Neither of these explanations work because we also know the larger, stockier Kul Tirans were involved in the Second War due to Cyrus Crestfall, who served in the Kul Tiran navy under Daelin himself before being sent back to help raise Taelia Fordragon. They were present, probably in the same general demographics as they have on Kul Tiras, meaning that their existence is still a soft retcon.

We are faced with a situation where we have an apparent anomaly in game and it is up to us to rationalize it. The anomaly is the apparent lack of the bigger Kul Tirans who accompanied Daelin. We can excuse their representation in Warcraft 3 as a limitation of the engine, although it will be interesting to see what Warcraft 3 reforged does with the Kul Tirans.

What we are really focusing on is the absence of the larger Kul Tirans from Tiragarde Keep in Durotar, which to my knowledge is the one Kul Tiran outpost we encountered prior to the addition of Kul Tiras itself. The big ones being eaten by their comrades was a joke of course, and not to be taken seriously.
The first possibility is that none of the bigger Kul Tirans accompanied Daelin which I will concede is probably not the most plausible explanation. It is, however, possible.

The second possibility is that most of the Kul Tirans who accompanied Daelin either died in the Horde assault on Theramore or, following that attack, were among those who left the city to return to Kul Tiras bearing the Grand Admiral's body back to Boralus. The handful of stubborn survivors who insisted on maintaining Tiragarde Keep on the doorstep of the very center of Horde power haven proven low in number and low in morale. It could be that among these handful of stubborn holdouts, there are simply none of the bigger Kul Tirans remaining as a result of sheer attrition.

It is this second possibility I believe is the likeliest as this squares with what we see in game. There is no evidence that a retcon has been performed. Had a retcon been intended, it would have been the easiest thing in the world for Blizzard to alter some of the NPCs in Durotar at Tiragarde keep to the modern Kul Tiran model. Truth be told I just don't think they think it matters enough to bother. But as long as an explanation can be put forth that is consistent with existing lore and the game as it currently is I am loath to accept a retcon has happened. Were they to update some of the NPCs in Tiragarde Keep to have the new models, I would be more than happy to concede this point.

If one group can undergo something a demographic retcon in order to accentuate a difference of type, then it is easy enough for another group to do so. That is the essence of the argument. You need only apply it to a narrative device that already stands between the exiled High Elves and their Blood Elven kin - for example, the nature of the exile itself and their long process of overcoming Arcane addiction without relying on Mana Tapping.

Except Kul Tirans and High Elves are not equivalent. As established, there are several rationales as to why Kul Tirans could look different from the Human standard. It COULD be Drust blood or it could be a feature brought about their relative isolation. Neither of this explanations applies to the High Elves.
The High Elves were (and are) blood purists who looked down on humanity, were scandalised by those who formed relationships with them and scorned the Half Elves. Half Elves are few in number precisely because of the cultural taboo against them after all. We can therefore rule out a Drust like contribution to the High Elf bloodline.

Regarding the possibility of isolation from their peers and environmental factors changing them, I completely agree with the possibility with the High Elves. Because that is exactly what contributed to the development of the High Elves from the Night Elves in the first place. Yet these changes were universal among the High Elven population, they happened at the same time and under the same circumstances. So all High Elves diverged in the same way and the same fashion already from Night Elves.

Which all leads to the same result. The Alliance High Elves and the Blood Elves come from the same population and in game are represented by the same model because of this.

As for a 'narrative device' to explain the difference in type, how? The only differentiation we have seen was triggered by an outside force; being bombarded by void energy in an attempt to provoke a transformation. It is worth pointing out that the circumstances of the Void Elf transformation were such that they easily could have justified giving them a radically different model, but did not and instead opted for a colour re-skin as the most obvious aesthetic differentiation. Why should Void Elves, who genuinely went through a transformative event, still use the base thalassian model if a new model is so easy to justify?

The Alliance High Elves had to deal with their addiction for a few years before the restoration of the Sunwell...in fact I think it was five years total. Alliance High Elves dealt with the addiction as follows according to Warcraft encyclopedia

"Such a low rate of attrition might be considered an argument in favor of simply forgoing magic and suffering through the consequences. Indeed, a few high elves are said to have succeeded in taking this route through sheer willpower: they survived the process, however unpleasant. Apparently certain magical artifacts also ameliorate the symptoms of withdrawal and might, if sufficiently powerful, be able to suppress them altogether.

This is not to say, however, that withdrawal from magic would leave the high elves unharmed. On the contrary, permanent mental or physical damage is possible."

They used artefacts to manage the addiction. Some used willpower albeit at the risk of seriously damaging their health. But in the end, they dealt with it as surely as the Blood Elves did until the day the Sunwell was restored and removed the necessity of managing the addiction. People use candles or flashlights in a power cut, but nobody insists on using candles or flashlights once the power comes back on.

I find it completely implausible that they could be physically differentiated from Blood Elves in that time period. There has there been no commentary and there been no representation in game to that effect and there has been no commetary and no representation because it did not happen. Since the original Blood/high elf models of Classic, there have been two upgrades to the thalassian model. The first when TBC made high elves playable as Blood Elves, and the second in patch 6.1 with the model upgrade. On both occasions, almost all thalassian elves were upgraded, whether Blood Elf or Alliance Elf.

Only one exception to this remained, the Silvermoon Guards who used the original upgraded Blood Elf model, a heavily reworked Night Elf model, from the TBC alpha. However in patch 8.1, in an example of the soft retcon you talked about earlier, every single one of these was replaced with a normal thalassian elf model.

I am unsure on the face of it why the inclusion of exiled High Elves as a playable race would undermine the integrity of the Blood Elves but the Void Elves do not? Even if you do consider the Void Elves different enough from the Blood Elves, it still seems like entirely arbitrary line drawn in the sand. I'm not personally opposed to Half Elves myself, although they apparently have a profound rarity in the Warcraft universe; in that there's only a literal handful of them in existence (and this not counting Kalec himself).

I personally believe Void Elves are as finally tuned as possible. They go right up to the line of infringing the integrity of the Blood Elves, so close that one more alteration that diminishes the differences would be too much and tip them over. But they ARE right on the edge and that to me looks deliberate.
Firstly, they went through a process that clearly differentiated them in lore, the attempt to change them into ethereals. And clear differentiation was not just based on story, it produced tangible physical effects. They turned variations of purple, gray and blue. Some of them even sprouted tentacles. There is genuine aesthetic differences between Blood Elves and Void Elves.
Secondly, Void Elves are thematically differentiated by their reliance on the void. This creates a dichotomy between them and the increasingly light based Blood Elves. I believe it is no coincidence that Blood Elves received the long requested golden eyes option so soon after the introduction of Void Elves, this is Blizzard making the dichotomy explicit.
Thirdly, the void changes the feel and gameplay experience in that it pervades all aspects of Void Elf existence, their culture, high elf in origin, feels significantly darkened. There is a shadowy, melancholy quality to the entire race that is just not present when playing a Blood Elf.

In other words, the line in the sand is not drawn arbitrarily. It is drawn along an axis of light-void dichotomy and division, a theme we will doubtless be seeing more of in the years to come. Yet Alliance High Elves are not differentiated along these lines. They are differentiated solely by their political opinion. But they are still aesthetically identical. They are, as tied to the Sunwell as they are, thematically identical. They are culturally identical in most respects and in the few they are not, they are assimilating into host human cultures.

Differences are fine, they are acceptable. Identical is not fine, which the Alliance High Elves pretty much are to the Blood Elves. And differences cannot just be invented if the end result is intended to reinventing the wheel. It worked for the Void Elves because the end result was a thalassian elf that was very much, NOT the light based elf represented by the Blood/Alliance High Elves. Attempting to create differences for the Alliance High Elves that actually change nothing about them is pointless.

Probably the effect of the Drust Vrykul and the Kul Tiran Humans being on an island for a prolonged period of time. Most of Vrykul history has Humanity being pretty far from them - exiles from their original lands on a completely different continent. Kul Tiras happens to be the only instance I can think of where Humans and Vrykul co-existed for a time (albeit not very peaceably given the givens).

I would agree with this.

There have been a number of different lore-related mechanisms to create this kind of disparity - differences that the High Elven exiles would have that their Blood Elven kin would not share. Purple/Blue/White eyes (owing to the use of external sources of Arcane power to quell their addiction), minor physiological changes due to the different sources of mana they've been forced to use, or if you wanted to go the Kul Tiran route you could even add Half-Elf elements to them to underline their closeness to Humanity due to their loss of a homeland, not too dissimilar from the stockier and larger Kul Tirans. Ostentatious heraldry and/or tattoos celebrating their lost culture and/or emphasizing their current allegiances could also be used - obviously elements that the Blood Elves would not and would have no need of sharing.

Thalassian eye colour is mutable, as golden eyes have proven. It is as much a differentiation between Blood Elves and Alliance Humans as brown and blonde hair is a differentiator between our co-workers. I would argue that this mutability means that Blood Elf players should have a selection of eye colour options on the character creator, rather than each eye colour justifying a separate racial option.

The Alliance High Elves, as the Warcraft encyclopedia stated, either attempted to forego the addiction through willpower or used artefacts to sate their need for arcane magic. The difference with the Blood Elves was not over the type of magic consumed, both sides needed arcane magics to sate the addiction, it was over HOW they sated it. In the end, those who made it through without damage must be presumed to have consumed enough arcane magic to sate the thirst. If we were both thirsty and you drank from a lake and I drank from a bottle, does that somehow result in a fundamental change between us?
Heraldy and tattoos are not differentiation, they are minor flourishes that will not sustain an entire different race.

And as for adding 'Half Elven' elements, I would suggest just adding Half Elves. Once again, 99% of what the pro High Elf community says they want. A fair skinned, blonde haired race with the physically distinct model you are arguing for here with an appropriate lore justification as to why they have that model (they are half human) but they have the high elf culture of their parents. Because it would be a HALF elf, not a High Elf, it would not threaten the integrity of the Blood Elves or the identity of the Horde. If a second compromise is required, that is the one.

As per the above, if the eye-glows were different from those of the Blood Elves they would be applicable. If the tattoos or Arcane heraldry bore very obvious High Elven exile themes they would also not be shared by the Blood Elves - as I doubt any Blood Elf in good standing would bedeck themselves with Blue/Silver tattoos, glowing glyphs that show Alliance heraldry, or such as that. Given the Blood Elves' historic xenophobia they'd also not have acquired any Human-like traits over a long period of living as refugees in predominantly Human settlements. It's very easy to underscore a number of noteworthy differences without much in the way of taxing the imagination, or breaking existing lore anymore than the Kul Tirans already have.

If the differences between Blood Elves and Alliance High Elves were of course so easy to realise, that still begs the obvious question. Why weren't they? Why did Blizzard reject them on the grounds that they are identical to Blood Elves? Why did Blizzard create Void Elves instead?

The obvious answer of course is that the differences some presume to be noteworthy are, in the grand scheme of things, inconsequential when defining a genuinely different race.

Either way you sift it, the debate either boils down to why they should do such a thing, or why they should change their stance on such a thing. As I've said before, I don't particularly mind either way - my only contention in this debate is the idea is that's there no lore-related reason to do so, which is a position I disagree with regardless of who actually says it. There *are* gameplay-related reasons for not doing so, and of course they can do whatever they want at the end of the day.

Yet there IS a lore rationale behind the rejection. I don't believe it is the primary reason for the rejection, but it is there. That Alliance High Elves are fragmented, scattered, degrading and assimilating. Pretending that there is a thriving society here other than the broken reality, as some do, is simply indulging head canon.

It's a fallacy because you're referring to them as if they are correct about it, but this is not a thing you can technically be correct on - it's a position, essentially an opinion, and even if they are the authority on the matter they can still be wrong (or you can still think they're wrong). And, of course, they've been wrong before; and they've gone back on things they've said they would or wouldn't do and done the opposite. You cannot prove a creator wrong or right about a work a fiction, especially in a context where there are no demonstrable facts to be had. Besides, I don't think anyone is claiming the developers are factually incorrect - they're saying that the current position is a mistake, and that is a valid opinion as well.

You would be surprised at the number of pro High Elf commentators who are in fact arguing that Ion Hazzikostas is incorrect in his statements. But you are correct that it is impossible to prove a creator wrong on their work of fiction.

When they have been wrong before and it has been proven to them, they have corrected the mistake. The classic example is of course Falstad and Kurdran, which is cited as an example of developers being mistaken. Leaving aside just how minor a point of lore that was, when confronted with evidence they were wrong they corrected it. THAT should have been the important takeaway from that exchange, not the possibility that they can be incorrect. When it comes to the stance of Blood Elves being the playable High Elves of the franchise, they have doubled down on it time and time again.

Which is why this is not a fallacy. Ion Hazzikostas, as the game director, came through a period of selecting the Allied races being added to the game in Battle for Azeroth. He would have been involved in those discussions. Each candidate would have been vetted and as a result, he would become intimately familiar with the pros and cons of each suggestion. If you watch the interview in 2014 where he was discussing the ideas behind the sub-race system that would inevitably become the Allied race system, he mentioned Alliance High Elves and brown skinned orcs not because he had given the matter in depth thought, but because both groups had been long standing requests to such a degree that even the developers were aware of them and they were the examples that first came to mind when he talked about the sub-race system. Yet several years later after they sat down, built the same, examined the candidates, weighed the pros and cons and actually worked through the requests he was far better placed to discuss exactly WHY Alliance High Elves were rejected, because as a creator he had sat down and down the work that led to their rejection.
The 2017 and 2018 questions weren't catching him out on obscure points of lore he was unfamiliar with, they were catching someone who had relatively recently being putting a great deal of thought into this very question. Even the manner of his answers on both occasions, how he was able to ream off the reasons why not to do Alliance High Elves, were like bullet points from a list they had worked out after extensive debate.

They thought this one through. Considerably. And it is pertinent that most of the objections raised to Alliance High Elves were addressed with Void Elves. I would suggest that once they knew why Alliance High Elves were unacceptable, and that they determined to create a variant instead for Alliance players as a compromise, that each negative in turn was tackled when crafting the Void Elves.

I can't speak for the "community," but I don't see it either way. Both the High Elven exiles and the Blood Elves are equally "true High Elves," both groups have the same heritage and history up to their point of cultural divide (the exile of the now-refugee High Elves from Quel'Thalas). Neither group is truer to being a High Elf than the other, in that sense. Playability doesn't really change any of that, either; the exiled High Elves already exist as a faction in and of themselves - if their existence were going to diminish the Blood Elves in some capacity, then this diminishing would've already occurred. The community can't dictate terms to the narrative, either; so I'm not sure why anyone would be afraid of playable High Elven exiles causing "[them to] instantly push their vision upon the rest of us?" Their opinions don't factor into the narrative in any realistic sense, and playability itself doesn't really change either group's lore. As for the Void Elves, I would actually argue that a focus on them could add color to the Void Elves' story - especially given the fact that the marquee High Elven exile Alleria Windrunner actually straddles both sides of the cultural divide as both a High Elven exile as well as a Void Elf (after a fashion). There's a lot of seeds in that story for generating both conflict and drama.

There is no cultural divide. There is a political divide. A cultural divide implies they are different peoples, as different peoples tend to have different cultures. They are the same people, divided by a political opinion. This is an important distinction.

Playability is absolutely central to this, on this point you are incorrect. At the moment, the Alliance High Elves are faction furniture, a reminder of what was. They are not a major force within the Alliance. As a result, they are as integral to the identity and theme of the Alliance as the Hozen are to the Horde. Once made playable, they are elevated within the narrative of the game. They become an integral part of the identity and theme of the Alliance, and that is profoundly unfair as they are identical to Blood Elves whose theme and identity are integral part of the overall identity of the Horde. This is a race that has been Horde for twelve and a half years, whose tenure in the horde far exceeds their tenure in the Alliance, and to give Alliance High Elves player race status is to validate the complaint of the pro High Elf hardcore, that Blizzard made a mistake giving high elves to the Horde in the first place.

By virtue of the name alone, the players will define themselves as High Elves and they will attempt to arrogate to themselves the mantle of the true High Elves of the franchise. That will negatively impact the gameplay experience of those Blood Elf players who are attuned to the lore, and there are plenty of them who will not appreciate that.

Void Elves don't compromise the sense that Blood Elves are the true High Elves of the franchise because Void Elves are clearly different.

That would be one way to resolve the issue, yes; but there are others.

This is still the best option by far.

Difficult to say, really. Even if the Void Elves can recruit exiled High Elves (or Blood Elves) to create new Void Elves, I don't think that will actually end the debate. Not until the exiled High Elves ceased to exist as their own group, which is unlikely to say the least.

Which I agree with. As stated, I believe the objection to Void Elves is based on aesthetic rather than lore reasons and I have ample evidence to this assertion, primarily the number of pro High Elf commentators who pushed for high elf customization on Void Elves as a 'compromise' and then switched back to advocating for Alliance High Elves once they realised the Void Elves were staying void coloured. Lore is a convenient fig-leaf for many whose motivation is the aesthetic, but who understand the reaction they would get from stating that explicitly.

The frequency with which one says something doesn't really add to either their being correct or incorrect.

No, the term you used was 'misspoke' which implied a slip of the tongue or making a statement he regretted and which he could walk back later. The second interview was the perfect opportunity to walk back any 'misspeaking' he made in the first. That he made the same statement again, this time with substantially more snark, means that even if he is incorrect, he sincerely believed what he was saying.

And as we discussed earlier, creators cannot be wrong about a work of fiction. Oh sure, they can be mistaken as in the case of Kudran and Falstad, but that's being mistaken on a hard, factual point within the lore and an extremely obscure one at that...that's why the developers were caught out, it's a tiny detail. Blood Elves being the playable High Elves of the franchise, that is a far more profound statement to make, one that goes to the substance of one of the game's major races and fundamental points regarding faction diversity and identity and one he knew the consequences of making...hence his joke about all the hate mail he was about to receive.

Assimilation is how different cultures come to be, in many cases. That being said you need only a catalyzing event to bring about a restoration of their original culture.

The original culture does not need to be restored, it exists as the thriving culture of the Blood Elves. Any 'catalysing' event would be their reabsorption within the Blood Elves, which of course means becoming a part of the Horde. As for 'assimilation' resulting in a different culture, that takes a time period considerably longer than the one we are likely to experience in the game's lifespan and leads to Half Elves being the logical expression of such an assimilation, being both physically and culturally caught between two worlds without the downsides for faction and racial integrity the Alliance High Elves threaten.

Actually it's a mix of Human and Elven in terms of its construction - the Allerian Stronghold is one of the only places in which you can see High Elven construction such as an Arcane Sanctuary and an Elven Mage Tower. There's also a goodly number of High Elven exiles present relative to their total population, actually having more High Elves per capita than even Dalaran (owing to its smaller population overall). We don't know what the status of the Allerian Stronghold is currently, but we know as of WotLK it was still extant.

It is still a miserable, foreboding place where a small group of isolated soliders have been clinging to survival on an alien world. That there is a slightly higher population of Alliance High Elves relative to the Humans in the settlement really doesn't alter the fundamentals, that the settlement is tiny, that the primary motivation of it's inhabitants was to return home once their mission was completed...the presence of Auric on Azeroth seems to suggest that they have done just that. It cannot be treated in any sense as a High Elf 'base' or that it's Alliance High Elf inhabitants can be seen as some sort of independent faction. Nor were their numbers appreciable enough to alter the dynamics of the Alliance High Elf population, as the Alliance High Elf population is still cited as extremely low even years after this addition.

It's a lodge, a largish and fortified structure acting as a barracks for a goodly number of people. It's also of note that other High Elven exiles are sprinkled around the general area of Highvale - it's assumed that they have smaller homesteads in the area not represented in-game (beyond the tents and pavilions clustered around Quel'Danil). We know as a given that in-game geography and lore geography is not 1:1.

The distinction between lodge and hut seems akin to arguing over the distinction between ship and boat. Regardless, it is a building that is hosted in Wildhammer lands, inhabited by recalcitrant Farstriders and supported by Draenei and Wildhammer Dwarves. As with Allerian Stronghold, it's existence was known and was not enough to dissuade Ion from twice stating the Alliance High Elves don't really come from anywhere. Between a half ruined and isolated settlement on an alien world and a lodge in someone else's backyard, I am finding it hard to disagree with him.

This is currently true, yes. And a quest chain bringing about a playable option for them could involved bringing them together and giving them a cause and/or reason to finally rally around. This is an explanation of why they're not currently playable, but it doesn't extend to them never being so..

The lore rationale for them not being playable is their population coupled with their fragmentation. The problem with your assertion is that it assumes the Allerian Stronghold, Quel'Danil and the Silver Covenant are three equivalent pieces of a could be greater whole.

This is incorrect. Allerian Stronghold and Quel'Danil are functionally irrelevant. Their participation in a hypothetical Alliance High Elf allied race is entirely immaterial, given that the Silver Covenant de facto represents the vast majority of the remaining exiled High Elves. The Silver Covenant is either capable of being fashioned into a distinct allied race, or it is not. As things stand, it is not and the addition of the tiny, tiny numbers of Elves from the other two areas is not going to change that.

The same could be said of the Void Elves - small, fragmented (recently exiled from their homeland), assimilated (into the Void), and even degrading (from Void-induced insanity). What is currently true of the Void Elves is also true of the High Elven exiles.

As Void Elves can almost certainly recruit, their numbers are expanding as depicted in game. Their assimilation into the void was also accompanied by physical alterations which put clear purple water between them and the Blood/Alliance High Elves. Their degradation as you put it involves their connection to the void, which is behind the light-void dichotomy at the core of Blood-Void Elf relations. Alliance High Elves are shrinking in number constantly, any assimilation is towards a Human experience already available by playing a Human...and any hybrid experience would be better expressed as a Half Elf allied race.

Actually a culture in demographic peril would necessarily focus on breeding - so there should be many more younger High Elven exiles due to a boom in breeding in response to their low numbers. And since the Silver Covenant forces appear alongside the Night Elves during the Suramar story-arc, we know they're still extant. We've no real info on their current numbers, and given that they're active in Cata, MoP and Legion I think it unlikely they've dwindled so markedly. More likely they left Dalaran along with Jaina, their patron, for places unknown.

High Elves are not in demographic peril. There are plenty of young High Elves running around the streets of Silvermoon. This particular point is predicated on the idea that political exile means racial and cultural distinction. It does not. If the Alliance High Elves were all killed in the story, the High Elf race would not end as a result as Blood Elves ARE High Elves. To use a real world example, are those Venezuelans driven from their country by the unfortunate political events there now NOT Venezuelan?

Secondly, when they appeared in Suramar Elisande mocked them for diluting their bloodlines. There is only one interpretation of this, the Silver Covenant are not giving birth to new Alliance High Elves, they are giving birth to Half Elves.

Thirdly, the information we have on their current numbers can be derived from what we knew of their numbers in the past i.e. critically low. Alliance High Elf numbers have been defined as far below viability on every occasion they have been discussed since 2005. And since 2005 we have had the possibility any Alliance High Elf could have become a Blood Elf and gone home, the destruction of Theramore, the campaign in Northrend, the purge in Dalaran, the campaign on the Isle of Thunder and the war against the Legion were they joined the Hunter Order Hall (implicitly confirming they are primarily a Hunter organization) AND the fact that some will have become Void Elves. With confirmation they are siring Half Elves primarily on one hand, and continuous warfare doubtless eating away at numbers defined in 2005 as critically low, the only logical conclusion that can be reached is that the remnant of a remnant must be clinging on by it's fingertips.

As a postscript, they have not left Dalaran. Their actions during Legion, as the vast majority of their actions have been, were taken in relation to Kirin Tor initiatives such as the war against the Legion or the invasion of Suramar. Veressa was shown to still be living in Greyfang Enclave as of the beginning of BFA in the three sister's comic. Note 'Greyfang Enclave' rather than Silver Enclave. The renaming of Sunreaver Sanctuary as Windrunner Sanctuary is unsurprising given the ejection of the Sunreavers, but the renaming of Silver Enclave to Greyfang Enclave when the Silver Covenant is still living there seems to imply a lose of influence. Frankly, it indicates their numbers are no longer sufficient to maintain the quarter exclusively as they did so in the past.

I don't really follow your logical supposition here. The Void Elves and the High Elven exiles are very separate communities, and even if the Void Elves can take in High Elven exiles and allow them to also join the Void Elves, this doesn't remove the existent cultural divide or nullify the original split between the two groups. From a lore standpoint, A does not follow to B in the linear path you've laid out, and many High Elven exiles would likely balk at becoming Void Elves due to their closeness to or belief in the Light as a philosophy.

Because there are two types of thalassian elves. Void Elves and the original flavour, the Blood/Alliance High Elves. The Blood/Alliance High Elves are riven by a political dispute, but are still the same people in the same way the Grimtotem Tauren and the other Tauren of Mulgore are still the same race. The cultural divide between the Void Elves and the Alliance High Elves is therefore the exact same one that exists between the Void Elves and the Blood Elves. Therefore, anyone who wishes to play a standard High Elf with an allegiance to the light need only roll a Blood Elf for that experience.

However, anyone who claims that it is allegiance to the Alliance which is the defining aspect of what they want to play has the opportunity to play a Void Elf who never became a Blood Elf, who never left the Alliance, whose loyalty to that Alliance was beyond question, who has chosen to become a Void Elf to better serve that Alliance. Rejecting that possibility confirms that allegiance to the Alliance was never the deal-breaker regarding Void Elves, it was a rejection of the Void Elf aesthetic and a desire to duplicate a core Horde race to the Alliance.

While many Alliance High Elves would balk at the possibility, we know from the presence of High Elves within Telogrus that some would not. And all it takes is for your Void Elves to be one of those Alliance High Elves who makes the change.

Not necessarily, no. At least not any more than playing a Void Elf grants the same access to an aesthetic and theme of a core Horde race without having to be Horde.

Void Elves do not. Everything about them is cankered and twisted by their void transformation into something genuinely their own and unique. The origins are there and can be clearly seen, but they are different in a way Alliance High Elves can never hope to be.

Maybe so, and maybe not. The impasse may well be resolved by a mass indoctrination of exiled High Elves into becoming Void Elves - but that is not the only way for the story to play out, and likely not even the best way for it to play out, ultimately.

That presumes there is an impasse. That the small pro High Elf community was upset that the compromise Blizzard came up with is not an impasse. It is an unfortunate but likely expected consequence. Unfortunate in that in an ideal world it would be perfectly possible to please everyone and that is not the case, and expected in that every decision Blizzard makes upsets someone. The people upset were always going to be upset, particularly given that they seemingly define compromise as getting everything they want on this matter with no regards to the opinions of those who wish the factions to remain as distinct as possible and who see the Blood Elves as the true playable High Elves of the franchise.

All the Alliance High Elves becoming Void Elves is the best solution. The likeliest solution is that Blizzard focuses on the Void Elves as the foil for the Blood Elves from now on and slowly forgets that the Alliance High Elves were a thing. One of the weird consequences of the new portal rooms was that Blizzard didn't want to use two portals in the same location going to Dalaran, in the Wrath and Legion timelines, as that clearly would have been too 'on the nose' in exposing the conceit that each continent in the game exists at a different moment in time rather than at a universal moment. Hence, they changed the Legion portal to be in Azsuna rather than to Dalaran again.

Such a decision means it is unlikely we will see Dalaran in the role of shared capital again, something which was probably unlikely anyway but it's an additional drag factor on it's reuse. Far more elegant to craft a new capital to which a direct portal can be attached. And the Silver Covenant is uniquely tied to Dalaran, the expansions involving Dalaran were the ones that saw the most substantial Silver Covenant participation. The fewer opportunities there are to return to Dalaran, the less the Silver Covenant make sense as a storytelling tool. And with the Void Elves already stepping up to be the foil to the Blood Elves, the more redundant the Silver Covenant likely seems.

So there is no impasse. The likeliest outcome is that the Silver Covenant will just be marginalized and the Void Elves used in their place.

Which is precisely what has been happening throughout BFA.

Nightborne and Kaldorei are also the same race, with scant few physiological alterations that have occurred to divide the two groups, and yet divided they are. I actually think the huge cultural upheaval caused by being exiled from your homeland and being forced to live on the fringes of society in a near-endangered state is more fundamentally separate and a more marked division that just undergoing a ritual that made you closer to the Void. Granted, they are physiologically changed, but then so are the Blood Elves changed by their temporary reliance on Fel energy. I disagree that those changes are so marked in one case and can be almost completely ignored in the other.

Yet Nightborne and Night Elves are as differentiated from each other as Void Elves and Blood/Alliance High Elves are, not as Blood Elves and Alliance High Elves are (which is barely at all). Were Nightborne as close to Night Elves as Alliance High Elves are to Blood Elves, then they would be a bunch of Druids physically indistinguishable from other Night Elves whose sole differentiating factor was an affinity to the Horde.

Instead we have the Nightborne who are physically different from Night Elves in terms of skin colour, hair colour, ear shape and musculature. We have a plausible lore based reason for this differentiation, their ten thousand years of isolation and exposure to the Nightwell.
They are culturally different as well, in that they have preserved the civilization of the now vanished Night Elf empire within Suramar. It was the Night Elves, the physically unchanged Night Elves, who had to create a new culture, yet they had the imperative to do so once it was demonstrated that arcane magic was their ruin and druidism was their future.

Void Elves have been physically transformed, albeit at a much faster rate than Nightborne were. And Void Elven culture hasn't been scrapped entirely, it has just been twisted from something recognisable into something pervaded by the void due to the void based transformation.

Both are instances of clear physical and cultural differentiation.

But the Blood Elves have not been physically differentiated. They did not consume fel energy to sate the addiction, they consumed arcane energy. The eye colour change was caused by the presence of the fel crystals scattered throughout Quel'thalas that they sought to use as a tool. And, as I keep mentioning, eye colour is mutable for thalassian elves. It could only be regarded as a differentiating feature if it were permanent. Instead, the golden eyes are now replacing the green eyes for the same reason the green eyes replaced the blue, exposure to that type of magic. Except, as all Elves are connected to the Sunwell (with the likely exception of the Void Elves), all Bloof/Alliance High Elves will probably in the end begin manifesting golden eyes because that is the consequence of a connection to a light based energy source. Whatever destiny the Blood Elves are on due to their reliance on light based magic, the Alliance High Elves are on that ride with them.

I think this is actually the primary cause for the existence of the problem - if the High Elven exiles no longer have a role to play in the story, then why do they keep showing up with such a pronounced focus? From their presence in TBC, to their high degree of involvement in WotLK, on to Cata with their role in Zul'Aman, and then in MoP with the Purge of Dalaran and the events of the Isle of Thunder? That's a pretty hefty footprint for a race that is "no longer relevant." I would argue that the High Elven exiles have gotten better treatment in the narrative than the Gnomes, Tauren, Trolls, or Dwarves up until this point at least. It remains to be seen what the Void Elves will do to top that, really; but so far in BfA they've not done much beyond their appearance at the Battle of Lordaeron.

I would disagree. Firstly, they have never had a narrative of their own. In WOTLK they were simply the Alliance counterpart to the Sunreavers. In Cata, they sat outside Zul'Aman in a single quest...and I would point out that I think Chronicles confirms it was the Horde that dealt with that issue which means they contributed nothing. In Mists of Pandaria, both the purge and the Isle of Thunder were really Dalaran and Jaina's story rather than the Silver Covenant. I could just as easily argue that the Isle of Thunder was a huge moment in the Sunreaver storyline...despite it clearly being a Blood Elf story in which the Sunreavers were but one component and it was Lor'themar, not Aethas, on whom the Horde plot focused.

In BFA the Void Elves have been present at the Battle of Lordaeron, their sub-leader is an Alliance follower who paritcipated in the war campaign, and Void Elves have been seen in action (and in full Alliance regalia)in multiple zones. In other words, in BFA the Void Elves are a functioning part of the Alliance. You may argue back that is exactly what the Silver Covenant did in the Isle of Thunder and you would be correct but that was the brief moment when the Silver Covenant, via Dalaran, were an actual part of the Alliance.

IWho can really say. This is not a long-winded attempt to put the lie to the developers or prove one side of the community wrong or right. Actually, I'd say this profound need to be "right" is at the heart of the conflict. I'm saying that the current rationale doesn't really stand in-line with what's historically been protrayed in the story, and still doesn't. I also don't think the Allied races were even created to put forward the desire for a sub-race system because if that's case, then they're pretty much a failed implementation. No one asked for Void Elves, and no one could've imagined the Nightborne even existed until they were shown in Legion. Ditto for the Highmountain Tauren, a totally new variation heretofore unknown, as well as the Kul Tiran Humans who were also unknown. And then's there the dozen or so variations untouched by any of these new Allied Races - Frostborne Dwarves, Felblood Elves, Mechagnomes, etc. etc. It's completely possible there will never be a playable High Elven option - I'd argue the inclusion of Void Elves now makes it even more unlikely for balance reasons, but that's a position that has no real support by either precedent or narrative. It is essentially a completely arbitrary decision.

Around the seven minute mark https://www.videogameszone.de/World-...lisch-1110814/

"We've definitely heard player interest in some kind of sub-race system and whether that means brown skinned Orcs or High Elves or...exactly...that could be very cool and something that our artists get very excited about when we talk about"

If you have judged them to have failed because they didn't meet the stated intent, then they have indeed failed. Nowhere is it stated that everything they try has to be a success. Garrisons proved that. But this interview shows that sub-race system began as a response to player feedback rather than a desire to tell different stories. I had hoped it would have been realised as a more comprehensive customization system at the time, but we are where we are. Perhaps telling new stories and seeding new plots became a part of the allied race plan as time went on, but the genesis of the system is easy to find in all the posts for Mechagnomes, brown skinned Orcs and yes, Alliance High Elves.

As Void Elves proved, there are certain red lines they were ultimately not willing to cross once they sat down and considered their options. Nobody asked for Void Elves, they asked for Alliance High Elves, a request Ion was familiar enough with in 2014 to quote it as an example. But Void Elves were created once they realised Blood Elves were identical to Alliance High Elves.

In hindsight though, the races seeded in Legion were clearly intended to be added in to the future Allied race system so one begat the other.

Tattoos devoted to further showcasing their separation from the Blood Elves or Quel'Thalas by adopting Alliance-related motifs? Why would the Blood Elves have such a thing? Hair styles wouldn't be nearly enough on their own, but combined with other such outward presentation changes they could help with differentiation.

Because that is an extremely specific alteration. Why shouldn't Blood Elves have tattoos with Horde motifs? And then racial differentiation is reduced to tattoos. I don't believe this is squarable. The only way to get Alliance High Elves is to make them less like Blood Elves, a LOT less like Blood Elves, because Blood Elves ARE the de facto , gold standard true High Elves of the franchise. But the more you move them away from Blood Elves, who ARE High Elves, the less they are High Elves. Once you reach a point where your Alliance High Elf no longer intrudes on the aesthetic and theme of a Horde race, you end up with an elf that isn't a High Elf. This is what they did with Void Elves and they were rejected by the hardcore of the pro High Elf community for this reason. While they claim to be ok with differentiation, Void Elves proves this isn't the case. They want a High Elf that is different from a Blood Elf but still a High Elf. They want to reinvent the wheel in such a way that it is no longer round.

That is impossible.

The point is that she was a Blood Elf involved with experimenting on the Void, and she likely wasn't along given the other Astromancers present in her wing of the Eye or among Kael's forces in Outland. Blood Elves were investigating the Void well before the Void Elves became a thing.

They all died in the end before completing their experiments. They died as Blood Elves who messed with the void, akin to a Blood Elf shadow priest. Solarian became a Void Entity, didn't even go through the Void Elf stage. And the void might only have become a threat to the Blood Elves once the Sunwell was restored as a font of light energy which might be when the strictures came in. These strictures are not unique to Silvermoon though, Dalaran also has a restriction on studying the shadow, as the exile of an apprentice who was tempted by Agatha the imp mother proved during Legion.

I actually reached the end. I would ask we try and control these replies, this took a considerable amount of time to write (several sessions across two days in fact) and I think the same is true of your previous responses. For both our sakes we should cut back a little.

[DeicideUH]

Same here, I think they could have never made better allies for the Blood elves than Nightborne, they look so nice together! <3

It also brings a cool balance between parallel societies with themes of day and night, it's beautiful.

I love the shal’dorei/sin’dorei relationship. They are the BFF races. So alike, yet each has so much to teach the other.

[Aldo Hawk]

https://www.wowhead.com/npc=26085/wendy-darren

https://www.wowhead.com/npc=26083/gerald-green#comments

https://www.wowhead.com/npc=26084/jeremiah-hawning

Look familiar?

The concept of these human models already existed, retaken and updated models they used so Kul'tiras didn't look too similar everywhere with the same two models of male and female humans. There's even the skinny one for god sake.

After BfA ends, we will start to see STORMWIND HUMANS NPCs with these models too, if there is not any of them already, because for now they are the new tool to make Kul'tiras interesting to look at and a new human model for as an allied race. But it's just a new human model after all. That's why Afrasiabi reiterated they are humans, just, humans...

It's the goddamn obvious!

Also, about why they have not replaced them with the new ones? Ask that to the goddamn ogres during and after WoD. For godsake I just expect that kind of comment coming...

In the other hand, we have elves.

Void elves came from the same population of Blood and High elves, and what changed them?

M A G I C

Do anyone know what else is involved in magic and elves?

A B S E N C E O F M A G I C

So we have the image of Nightborne pre-arcan'dor fresh in our minds (I hope). Stop feeding magic and they will... change.

This is not the same thing that happens with Thalassians of course, but shows how elves relate to magic and the absence of it. Even more in high magical reliant elves as the shal'dorei and thalassians.

Now, what happens with Blood elves and High elves? Who were/are affected by Fel and who has changed their relationship with magic?

Saying that they can't have if anything small physical differences is too shortsighted and square headed.

Damn, even saying that Blood elves can also have tattoos/paintings and leaving it at that is also square headed and shortsighted, what about having different themes for these? Also impossible? Blood elves caring to wear High elven aesthetics? Yeah sure, give me a fucking break.

At which point having bias is enough of an excuse for being unreasonable and illogical?

- - - Updated - - -

I love the shal’dorei/sin’dorei relationship. They are the BFF races. So alike, yet each has so much to teach the other.

Yeah dude, I can't be happier to see how they have just mixed these two together, it's like cheese and ham in elven bread.

[Aucald]

Except Kul Tirans and High Elves are not equivalent. As established, there are several rationales as to why Kul Tirans could look different from the Human standard. It COULD be Drust blood or it could be a feature brought about their relative isolation. Neither of this explanations applies to the High Elves.

To the degree that High Elven exiles need to be differentiated from the Blood Elves - which based on the Void Elf standard needn't be as profound as the Kul Tiran Human and classic Human differentiation, it would actually be easy enough to accomplish.

The High Elves were (and are) blood purists who looked down on humanity, were scandalised by those who formed relationships with them and scorned the Half Elves. Half Elves are few in number precisely because of the cultural taboo against them after all. We can therefore rule out a Drust like contribution to the High Elf bloodline.

"Were" being the more applicable standard here. Lacking a homeland, separated from their heritage, and forced into dependency on Human kingdoms such as Dalaran and Stormwind it is likely that the exiles would relax their blood purity somewhat in the name of continuance to at least some degree. But this needn't even be a product of interbreeding, it could just be a product of using Arcane energy from predominantly Human sources causing subtle mutations to the High Elven genome (much in the same way Fel and Void magic have made alterations in the Blood and Void Elves).

Regarding the possibility of isolation from their peers and environmental factors changing them, I completely agree with the possibility with the High Elves. Because that is exactly what contributed to the development of the High Elves from the Night Elves in the first place. Yet these changes were universal among the High Elven population, they happened at the same time and under the same circumstances. So all High Elves diverged in the same way and the same fashion already from Night Elves.

Which all leads to the same result. The Alliance High Elves and the Blood Elves come from the same population and in game are represented by the same model because of this.

Universal solely because the population of High Elves developed along the same lines, but this was not the case with either the Blood Elves (and their Fel mutations) or the Void Elves (and their Void mutation). Given that the High Elven exiles don't have the same alterations the Fel made to the Blood Elves, I think this universality argument holds no real water. With their reliance on other sources and their exile from Silvermoon, it's easy to see how other changes might've occurred to their population as well - such as what happened with the unfortunate Quel'Lithien High Elves. Changes to the High/Blood Elves needn't be universal as demonstrated several times over.

As for a 'narrative device' to explain the difference in type, how? The only differentiation we have seen was triggered by an outside force; being bombarded by void energy in an attempt to provoke a transformation. It is worth pointing out that the circumstances of the Void Elf transformation were such that they easily could have justified giving them a radically different model, but did not and instead opted for a colour re-skin as the most obvious aesthetic differentiation. Why should Void Elves, who genuinely went through a transformative event, still use the base thalassian model if a new model is so easy to justify?

The Void Elves still do use the base Thalassian model, only tinted blue/purple with glowing hair and/or different hair styles (and for some reason a different accent?) - so this isn't a very strong argument.

The Alliance High Elves had to deal with their addiction for a few years before the restoration of the Sunwell...in fact I think it was five years total. Alliance High Elves dealt with the addiction as follows according to Warcraft encyclopedia

"Such a low rate of attrition might be considered an argument in favor of simply forgoing magic and suffering through the consequences. Indeed, a few high elves are said to have succeeded in taking this route through sheer willpower: they survived the process, however unpleasant. Apparently certain magical artifacts also ameliorate the symptoms of withdrawal and might, if sufficiently powerful, be able to suppress them altogether.

This is not to say, however, that withdrawal from magic would leave the high elves unharmed. On the contrary, permanent mental or physical damage is possible."

They used artefacts to manage the addiction. Some used willpower albeit at the risk of seriously damaging their health. But in the end, they dealt with it as surely as the Blood Elves did until the day the Sunwell was restored and removed the necessity of managing the addiction. People use candles or flashlights in a power cut, but nobody insists on using candles or flashlights once the power comes back on.

I find it completely implausible that they could be physically differentiated from Blood Elves in that time period. There has there been no commentary and there been no representation in game to that effect and there has been no commetary and no representation because it did not happen. Since the original Blood/high elf models of Classic, there have been two upgrades to the thalassian model. The first when TBC made high elves playable as Blood Elves, and the second in patch 6.1 with the model upgrade. On both occasions, almost all thalassian elves were upgraded, whether Blood Elf or Alliance Elf.

You could easily have a story where the High Elven exiles choose to cut themselves off from the Sunwell entirely, not trusting it in the Blood Elves' hands and perhaps thinking it was only a matter of time before the Blood Elves cut them off anyways to hoard the power of the Sunwell for themselves (in an ironic echo of what the Highborne did with the Well of Eternity). This racial cut from the power sustaining them, such as it is, provokes a need for them to undergo the process of overcoming the Arcane addiction through force of will alone. In the process some of High Elven exiles undergo Wretched transformation, still others go insane, but the majority remaining survive the process and emerge slightly altered but free of their addictive shackles. Toss in some powerful Arcane relic or artifact to help with the process and you have the makings of a narrative story that would further differentiate the High Elven exiles from the Blood Elves and Void Elves in lieu of making them playable.

I personally believe Void Elves are as finally tuned as possible. They go right up to the line of infringing the integrity of the Blood Elves, so close that one more alteration that diminishes the differences would be too much and tip them over. But they ARE right on the edge and that to me looks deliberate.

Firstly, they went through a process that clearly differentiated them in lore, the attempt to change them into ethereals. And clear differentiation was not just based on story, it produced tangible physical effects. They turned variations of purple, gray and blue. Some of them even sprouted tentacles. There is genuine aesthetic differences between Blood Elves and Void Elves.

Secondly, Void Elves are thematically differentiated by their reliance on the void. This creates a dichotomy between them and the increasingly light based Blood Elves. I believe it is no coincidence that Blood Elves received the long requested golden eyes option so soon after the introduction of Void Elves, this is Blizzard making the dichotomy explicit.

Thirdly, the void changes the feel and gameplay experience in that it pervades all aspects of Void Elf existence, their culture, high elf in origin, feels significantly darkened. There is a shadowy, melancholy quality to the entire race that is just not present when playing a Blood Elf.

None of those differences really discount exiled High Elves, and all them are equally and uniquely replicable to create the same degree of differentiation. Simply put: while all these qualifiers work fine for the Void Elves, they don't discount the High Elven exiles for any reason.

In other words, the line in the sand is not drawn arbitrarily. It is drawn along an axis of light-void dichotomy and division, a theme we will doubtless be seeing more of in the years to come. Yet Alliance High Elves are not differentiated along these lines. They are differentiated solely by their political opinion. But they are still aesthetically identical. They are, as tied to the Sunwell as they are, thematically identical. They are culturally identical in most respects and in the few they are not, they are assimilating into host human cultures.

Differences are fine, they are acceptable. Identical is not fine, which the Alliance High Elves pretty much are to the Blood Elves. And differences cannot just be invented if the end result is intended to reinventing the wheel. It worked for the Void Elves because the end result was a thalassian elf that was very much, NOT the light based elf represented by the Blood/Alliance High Elves. Attempting to create differences for the Alliance High Elves that actually change nothing about them is pointless.

I don't disagree with that in regard to the Void Elves and Blood Elves, I just disagree that it invalidates the High Elven exiles. The divide that led to the creation of the Void Elves itself was a political one (e.g. Umbric's refusal to bow to Rommath's prohibition on Void magic). I also disagree that the Void Elves are starkly aesthetically different from the Blood Elves - there are differences, but they're mostly surface and not really marked at all. I would agree the High Elven exiles are closer to the Blood Elves in terms of their aesthetics, but as covered above that's easily remediated through a number of simple narratives (just like the one that created the Void Elves).

Thalassian eye colour is mutable, as golden eyes have proven. It is as much a differentiation between Blood Elves and Alliance Humans as brown and blonde hair is a differentiator between our co-workers. I would argue that this mutability means that Blood Elf players should have a selection of eye colour options on the character creator, rather than each eye colour justifying a separate racial option.

I would agree that eye color couldn't be the sole factor differentiating the groups, but then I don't think anyone has claimed that either.

The Alliance High Elves, as the Warcraft encyclopedia stated, either attempted to forego the addiction through willpower or used artefacts to sate their need for arcane magic. The difference with the Blood Elves was not over the type of magic consumed, both sides needed arcane magics to sate the addiction, it was over HOW they sated it. In the end, those who made it through without damage must be presumed to have consumed enough arcane magic to sate the thirst. If we were both thirsty and you drank from a lake and I drank from a bottle, does that somehow result in a fundamental change between us? Heraldy and tattoos are not differentiation, they are minor flourishes that will not sustain an entire different race.

Considering the Void Elves' void affections and tentacles are themselves just minor flourishes accompanying the change to their flesh and eyes, why would it not actually be enough to differentiate them? The Void Elves have those minor changes, as well as their changes to culture, to stand apart from their origin as Blood Elves - all things easily supplied to the High Elven exiles. Given that the Void Elves were likely created whole-cloth to satisfy a narrative plot hook going into WoW's future, it's easy enough to do the same for the High Elven exiles (and to a lesser degree) to supply the needed level of differentiation.

And as for adding 'Half Elven' elements, I would suggest just adding Half Elves. Once again, 99% of what the pro High Elf community says they want. A fair skinned, blonde haired race with the physically distinct model you are arguing for here with an appropriate lore justification as to why they have that model (they are half human) but they have the high elf culture of their parents. Because it would be a HALF elf, not a High Elf, it would not threaten the integrity of the Blood Elves or the identity of the Horde. If a second compromise is required, that is the one.

A possible approach, sure.

If the differences between Blood Elves and Alliance High Elves were of course so easy to realise, that still begs the obvious question. Why weren't they? Why did Blizzard reject them on the grounds that they are identical to Blood Elves? Why did Blizzard create Void Elves instead?

The obvious answer of course is that the differences some presume to be noteworthy are, in the grand scheme of things, inconsequential when defining a genuinely different race.

I think I already answered this before, but to reiterate I think it is likely the Void Elves were made to facilitate a specific narrative - that of the "Light vs. Void" story-arc that is likely to assume a paramount place in WoW's overarching story. This is the same reason the Lightforged Draenei were also added in the same time-frame. The High Elven exiles aren't exactly relevant to the current story being told, and like all the different racial options are likely low in terms of development priority. The same reason why the Mag'har Orcs also concern this ongoing story-arc (e.g. their hostility to Yrel and Xe'ra and the aggression of the Lightbound, themselves a variation of the Lightforged).

Yet there IS a lore rationale behind the rejection. I don't believe it is the primary reason for the rejection, but it is there. That Alliance High Elves are fragmented, scattered, degrading and assimilating. Pretending that there is a thriving society here other than the broken reality, as some do, is simply indulging head canon.

As was said earlier, this is currently true of them - but how do you explain their continual showcasing in WoW? If they are so frayed and so ephemeral, why do they keep showing up as a cohesive faction moving events along in both primary and secondary story-arcs? Why do they have such a prominent showcase in WotLK? Why do they show up again during Cata at Zul'Aman? Why do they have a big footprint in MoP? Why do they show up yet again in Legion during the Suramar quest-chain? Why do they have a showcase in BfA with a mercenary group in Boralus? If the lore is that they're not cohesive enough to be playable, then why keep showcasing them to some degree in almost every expansion?

You would be surprised at the number of pro High Elf commentators who are in fact arguing that Ion Hazzikostas is incorrect in his statements. But you are correct that it is impossible to prove a creator wrong on their work of fiction.

If the argument was based solely on what Ion Hazzikostas' opinion was or what he had said, then the argument would be over. Obviously this isn't the case - people are welcome to their own opinions and positions, and people are also free to disagree with the positions of the developers.

When they have been wrong before and it has been proven to them, they have corrected the mistake. The classic example is of course Falstad and Kurdran, which is cited as an example of developers being mistaken. Leaving aside just how minor a point of lore that was, when confronted with evidence they were wrong they corrected it. THAT should have been the important takeaway from that exchange, not the possibility that they can be incorrect. When it comes to the stance of Blood Elves being the playable High Elves of the franchise, they have doubled down on it time and time again.

How many times did they double down on the existence of Classic servers? I think that was far more contentious than the debate over playable High Elves in some capacity. And still, it doesn't matter what the position of the developers actually is, either - people still have other ideas which are supported through in-game evidence-based argumentation.

Which is why this is not a fallacy. Ion Hazzikostas, as the game director, came through a period of selecting the Allied races being added to the game in Battle for Azeroth. He would have been involved in those discussions. Each candidate would have been vetted and as a result, he would become intimately familiar with the pros and cons of each suggestion. If you watch the interview in 2014 where he was discussing the ideas behind the sub-race system that would inevitably become the Allied race system, he mentioned Alliance High Elves and brown skinned orcs not because he had given the matter in depth thought, but because both groups had been long standing requests to such a degree that even the developers were aware of them and they were the examples that first came to mind when he talked about the sub-race system. Yet several years later after they sat down, built the same, examined the candidates, weighed the pros and cons and actually worked through the requests he was far better placed to discuss exactly WHY Alliance High Elves were rejected, because as a creator he had sat down and down the work that led to their rejection.

Ion Hazzikostas having a position or opinion is not a fallacy - that his position or opinion solely dictates what should or will be done in the future is. You're also speculating pretty deeply as to why the High Elven exiles were originally rejected as an Allied Race, we have no real way of knowing why this is and outside of the rationale given (which is itself worthy of debate of analysis as done here at length) doesn't scan with what we already know. The two arguments he put forth are that A.) the High Elven exiles are differentiated enough, and B.) are too few in number to qualify. The Void Elves' admission as a playable race diminishes the first point in that they're not very different, and completely abrogates the second point in that they're actually just as few if not fewer than the High Elven exiles.

Your contention is to aesthetics which is already pretty hotly debated - but I actually think the truth lies in the narratives they wish to tell. The High Elven exiles simply aren't relevant to the "Light vs. Void" narrative in the way the Void Elves will likely be. Another possibility is that the developers have a plan for the High Elven exiles that will either markedly change their story or see them become completely irrelevant (possibly being completely assimilated into the Void Elves' ranks, who can really say). Regardless, the argument is that playable High Elves is a thing that *could* be done under the existing lore with relatively minor changes (justified or not, as is the case with the Kul Tiran Humans) - the arguments presented by Hazzikostas simply don't scan with what we've already seen.

The 2017 and 2018 questions weren't catching him out on obscure points of lore he was unfamiliar with, they were catching someone who had relatively recently being putting a great deal of thought into this very question. Even the manner of his answers on both occasions, how he was able to ream off the reasons why not to do Alliance High Elves, were like bullet points from a list they had worked out after extensive debate.

They thought this one through. Considerably. And it is pertinent that most of the objections raised to Alliance High Elves were addressed with Void Elves. I would suggest that once they knew why Alliance High Elves were unacceptable, and that they determined to create a variant instead for Alliance players as a compromise, that each negative in turn was tackled when crafting the Void Elves.

That outcome is pretty open contest if you ask me - the creation of the Void Elves and the Nightborne closed few doors and opened up several more. If playable High Elven exiles trods over the faction identity of the Blood Elves do deeply, why do the playable Nightborne for the Horde not do the same to the Night Elves on the Alliance side? What is it about the High Elven exiles that is so uniquely shared that it makes them infeasible? I still don't see this question having been answered well, and every point so far covered and has been pretty effectively counterpointed.

There is no cultural divide. There is a political divide. A cultural divide implies they are different peoples, as different peoples tend to have different cultures. They are the same people, divided by a political opinion. This is an important distinction.

Not having a homeland anymore and being a refugee definitely changes one's culture over time, as does assimilation into another culture. A political opinion is what created their initial divide (e.g. being exiled from Quel'Thalas), but the passage of time has solidifed that divide into a cultural shift in perspective. If it were only political the High Elven exiles would've accepted Lor'themar's call for unity upon restoration of the Sunwell, but they did not - this underscores a profound cultural shift in their people.

Playability is absolutely central to this, on this point you are incorrect. At the moment, the Alliance High Elves are faction furniture, a reminder of what was. They are not a major force within the Alliance. As a result, they are as integral to the identity and theme of the Alliance as the Hozen are to the Horde. Once made playable, they are elevated within the narrative of the game. They become an integral part of the identity and theme of the Alliance, and that is profoundly unfair as they are identical to Blood Elves whose theme and identity are integral part of the overall identity of the Horde. This is a race that has been Horde for twelve and a half years, whose tenure in the horde far exceeds their tenure in the Alliance, and to give Alliance High Elves player race status is to validate the complaint of the pro High Elf hardcore, that Blizzard made a mistake giving high elves to the Horde in the first place.

Their continual showcasing, as enumerated above, belies this line of argumentation. The importance of the High Elven exiles also doesn't have any kind of noteworthy overleaf with respect to the Blood Elves, either; I really don't follow this reasoning. The ascent of the Nightborne to playability didn't trample the Night Elves, after all; so why would playable High Elven exiles do this to the Blood Elves? Even if the two races were completely aesthetically the same it wouldn't matter overly (e.g. the Pandaren) - it's been done before, after all.

By virtue of the name alone, the players will define themselves as High Elves and they will attempt to arrogate to themselves the mantle of the true High Elves of the franchise. That will negatively impact the gameplay experience of those Blood Elf players who are attuned to the lore, and there are plenty of them who will not appreciate that.

This seems like pretty questionable supposition, and more something you're personally afraid of as opposed to an objective rationale. I mean, I am pretty well attuned to the lore and my Horde main is a Blood Elf Death Knight and I've no fear of playable High Elves negatively impacting my gameplay experience at all. I have no doubt plenty of other people feel the same. You can't please all the people all the time, of course; but I think the number of people who will be negatively impacted is duly minimal.

Which I agree with. As stated, I believe the objection to Void Elves is based on aesthetic rather than lore reasons and I have ample evidence to this assertion, primarily the number of pro High Elf commentators who pushed for high elf customization on Void Elves as a 'compromise' and then switched back to advocating for Alliance High Elves once they realised the Void Elves were staying void coloured. Lore is a convenient fig-leaf for many whose motivation is the aesthetic, but who understand the reaction they would get from stating that explicitly.

Aesthetics are grounded in lore, so I would argue it isn't a fig leaf at all. I think people want playable High Elven exiles because they appreciate their lore and their unique place in the greater Warcraft narrative - as well as the fact that they've been important part of WoW since Classic (back when only a few of them showed up in the game, and always in a cloak of mystery and enigma).

No, the term you used was 'misspoke' which implied a slip of the tongue or making a statement he regretted and which he could walk back later. The second interview was the perfect opportunity to walk back any 'misspeaking' he made in the first. That he made the same statement again, this time with substantially more snark, means that even if he is incorrect, he sincerely believed what he was saying.

I don't doubt he sincerely believed what he was saying, I'm saying that it's not really substantive to the debate at hand. Continually going back to "well, the developers said 'no'" is what an appeal to authority *is*. We're arguing about what should be done, or should have been done, not what was done. In this sense their opinions aren't really important.

And as we discussed earlier, creators cannot be wrong about a work of fiction. Oh sure, they can be mistaken as in the case of Kudran and Falstad, but that's being mistaken on a hard, factual point within the lore and an extremely obscure one at that...that's why the developers were caught out, it's a tiny detail. Blood Elves being the playable High Elves of the franchise, that is a far more profound statement to make, one that goes to the substance of one of the game's major races and fundamental points regarding faction diversity and identity and one he knew the consequences of making...hence his joke about all the hate mail he was about to receive.

Different kind of argument with a different context. The argument we're having (and the nature of the fallacy) is more akin to this:

Person A: I don't think [main character] in [noteworthy work of fiction] should've been killed.
Person B: Well, the author thought they should've been killed because that's how they wrote the book.
Person A: Yeah, I know, but [series of points about why character's death isn't good for the book, makes no sense, or isn't well explained].
Person B: Well, the author disagreed and wrote it differently.
Person A: I don't care what the author thinks, I think it was a bad outcome because [different version of same reasons].
Person B: Well none of those reasons matter because the author disagrees.
Person A: I'm saying that the author got it wrong.
Person B: The author is always right because they write the book.
Person A: That's not how this works. That's not how any of this works.

You can see how this kind of appeal to authority is kind of nonsensical in this context? No one is denying the developers had reasons or opinions, or even denying what actually happened - what they're saying is the developers got it wrong. Just like they got it wrong about Classic servers, class pruning, or any number of other things that have changed during the life of WoW. The developers aren't omniscient, and their positions aren't automatically inerrant or incapable of being questioned.

The original culture does not need to be restored, it exists as the thriving culture of the Blood Elves. Any 'catalysing' event would be their reabsorption within the Blood Elves, which of course means becoming a part of the Horde. As for 'assimilation' resulting in a different culture, that takes a time period considerably longer than the one we are likely to experience in the game's lifespan and leads to Half Elves being the logical expression of such an assimilation, being both physically and culturally caught between two worlds without the downsides for faction and racial integrity the Alliance High Elves threaten.

I disagree on both parts of this rebuttal. The High Elven exiles have their own culture as a product of their long-term refugee status, and there are a number of possible catalyzing events that could occur - including absorption by the Void Elves which you've already enumerated but somehow left out here in saying there is only one such event? I've added 2-3 more in our various exchanges, all equally plausible within the existing lore. With a bit of imagination I can easily think of quite a few more.

It is still a miserable, foreboding place where a small group of isolated soliders have been clinging to survival on an alien world. That there is a slightly higher population of Alliance High Elves relative to the Humans in the settlement really doesn't alter the fundamentals, that the settlement is tiny, that the primary motivation of it's inhabitants was to return home once their mission was completed...the presence of Auric on Azeroth seems to suggest that they have done just that. It cannot be treated in any sense as a High Elf 'base' or that it's Alliance High Elf inhabitants can be seen as some sort of independent faction. Nor were their numbers appreciable enough to alter the dynamics of the Alliance High Elf population, as the Alliance High Elf population is still cited as extremely low even years after this addition.

We actually don't know about the status of the Allerian Stronghold since the fall of the Illidari and the Legion itself - it could've expanded, it could've collapsed, or it could just be as it was with its inhabitants only having gotten a little older. The presence of Auric on Azeroth doesn't really change anything as it's established that transit between Azeroth and Outland is still open, and Nazgrel (the Orc leader of Thrallmar) also appears in the Undercity in Legion as part of the gathering of the Horde leaders for the PvP event. With the advent of the Void Elves the population argument has become exceedingly weak for preventing the ascent of the High Elven exiles as a playable choice, so their low population is no longer much of an issue.

The distinction between lodge and hut seems akin to arguing over the distinction between ship and boat. Regardless, it is a building that is hosted in Wildhammer lands, inhabited by recalcitrant Farstriders and supported by Draenei and Wildhammer Dwarves. As with Allerian Stronghold, it's existence was known and was not enough to dissuade Ion from twice stating the Alliance High Elves don't really come from anywhere. Between a half ruined and isolated settlement on an alien world and a lodge in someone else's backyard, I am finding it hard to disagree with him.

I made the distinction because calling Highvale "a hut" is unnecessarily demeaning and also badly reflects on the argument that it's a settlement in its own right, regardless of where it's located or who helps support it. Dissuading Ion is unnecessary as I'm not debating with Ion. As the population argument has already been weakened to the point of being irrelevant now, the numbers of exiles in Highvale is also moot - I'm simply rebutting the idea that Highvale is some single hut in the middle of nowhere. In terms of lore, I would imagine Highvale probably houses a hundred or so High Elves in and around its environs, as it is one of their few remaining population centers.

The lore rationale for them not being playable is their population coupled with their fragmentation. The problem with your assertion is that it assumes the Allerian Stronghold, Quel'Danil and the Silver Covenant are three equivalent pieces of a could be greater whole.

This is incorrect. Allerian Stronghold and Quel'Danil are functionally irrelevant. Their participation in a hypothetical Alliance High Elf allied race is entirely immaterial, given that the Silver Covenant de facto represents the vast majority of the remaining exiled High Elves. The Silver Covenant is either capable of being fashioned into a distinct allied race, or it is not. As things stand, it is not and the addition of the tiny, tiny numbers of Elves from the other two areas is not going to change that.

Irrelevant how? Given the last existing calculus putting the High Elves at around 1,500 individuals left, Quel'Danil and the Allerian Stronghold represent their last remaining population centers. I would imagine the stronghold and lodge probably have High Elven populations in the low hundreds, with Dalaran (and the Silver Covenant) representing the greater portion of High Elves in the higher hundreds. The rest would be a few individuals dotted around various Alliance settlements around Azeroth. The High Elven exiles have 3 times the number of strongholds than the Void Elves themselves do.

As Void Elves can almost certainly recruit, their numbers are expanding as depicted in game. Their assimilation into the void was also accompanied by physical alterations which put clear purple water between them and the Blood/Alliance High Elves. Their degradation as you put it involves their connection to the void, which is behind the light-void dichotomy at the core of Blood-Void Elf relations. Alliance High Elves are shrinking in number constantly, any assimilation is towards a Human experience already available by playing a Human...and any hybrid experience would be better expressed as a Half Elf allied race.

Still unsubstantiated and any population increase of the Void Elves is still not present in canon lore as of yet. We also don't know if the High Elven exiles are shrinking in number, as they could be undergoing an explosion in birth rates due consciousness of their endangered status. Both outcomes are equally unknown and equally possible outcomes. The High Elven exiles are definitely *not* Humans, as well, so the idea that their experience is replicated by playing a Human has no ground to stand on at all.

High Elves are not in demographic peril. There are plenty of young High Elves running around the streets of Silvermoon. This particular point is predicated on the idea that political exile means racial and cultural distinction. It does not. If the Alliance High Elves were all killed in the story, the High Elf race would not end as a result as Blood Elves ARE High Elves. To use a real world example, are those Venezuelans driven from their country by the unfortunate political events there now NOT Venezuelan?

High Elven exiles, to be precise, those High Elves exiled from Silvermoon by Lor'themar and living as refugees across Azeroth or Outland. In your real-world example we'd call them Venezuelan exiles or refugees, and not Venezuelans if they had been pointedly exiled by the authorities in Venezuela and were no longer legal citizens of that nation. I find this line of argumentation needlessly pedantic as well, as the Blood Elves themselves no longer refer to themselves as "High Elves." So when someone says "High Elf" it's quite easy to understand what or who they're referring to based on context. I've specifically added the "exile" descriptor to avoid this semantic pitfall (somewhat unnecessarily, I still think).

Secondly, when they appeared in Suramar Elisande mocked them for diluting their bloodlines. There is only one interpretation of this, the Silver Covenant are not giving birth to new Alliance High Elves, they are giving birth to Half Elves.

Also unsubstantiated by any form of canon lore. Elisande could've just been referring to their closeness to Humanity, or specifically to Alleria's relationship with Rhonin specifically (as she is the only known High Elven exile to have given birth to Half-elven children).

Thirdly, the information we have on their current numbers can be derived from what we knew of their numbers in the past i.e. critically low. Alliance High Elf numbers have been defined as far below viability on every occasion they have been discussed since 2005. And since 2005 we have had the possibility any Alliance High Elf could have become a Blood Elf and gone home, the destruction of Theramore, the campaign in Northrend, the purge in Dalaran, the campaign on the Isle of Thunder and the war against the Legion were they joined the Hunter Order Hall (implicitly confirming they are primarily a Hunter organization) AND the fact that some will have become Void Elves. With confirmation they are siring Half Elves primarily on one hand, and continuous warfare doubtless eating away at numbers defined in 2005 as critically low, the only logical conclusion that can be reached is that the remnant of a remnant must be clinging on by it's fingertips.

There is no such confirmation, and so this line of argumentation lacks any real support in canon. I agree the High Elven exiles are predominantly Hunters, though; as most of them are Farstriders. There *are* High Elven exile examples of most of the other classes.

As a postscript, they have not left Dalaran. Their actions during Legion, as the vast majority of their actions have been, were taken in relation to Kirin Tor initiatives such as the war against the Legion or the invasion of Suramar. Veressa was shown to still be living in Greyfang Enclave as of the beginning of BFA in the three sister's comic. Note 'Greyfang Enclave' rather than Silver Enclave. The renaming of Sunreaver Sanctuary as Windrunner Sanctuary is unsurprising given the ejection of the Sunreavers, but the renaming of Silver Enclave to Greyfang Enclave when the Silver Covenant is still living there seems to imply a lose of influence. Frankly, it indicates their numbers are no longer sufficient to maintain the quarter exclusively as they did so in the past.

Vereesa is still there, but the rest of the Silver Covenant appear to be mostly gone - and given the events of "War Crimes" as well as Vereesa's relative inability to relocate freely (she has family to care for, after all) it makes sense she would still be there. The renaming of the quarters likely have nothing to do with their populations, though; and more to do with the events of Legion and the marquee leaders and races of the expansion. The Silver Covenant and Sunreavers aren't relevant to Legion whereas the Worgen and Forsaken are, given the events in the story itself. The Sunreaver area has been overhauled with predominantly Forsaken themes, and the same with the Silver Covenant area with Worgen themes. It's likely with the travel of Dalaran to a hostile area like the Broken Shore that the Silver Covenant's civilian and merchant class have relocated to a safer place like Stormwind, or Highvale. The Sunreavers had been exiled from Dalaran back in MoP, which explains their absence and the "takeover" of their subzone from WotLK.

Because there are two types of thalassian elves. Void Elves and the original flavour, the Blood/Alliance High Elves. The Blood/Alliance High Elves are riven by a political dispute, but are still the same people in the same way the Grimtotem Tauren and the other Tauren of Mulgore are still the same race. The cultural divide between the Void Elves and the Alliance High Elves is therefore the exact same one that exists between the Void Elves and the Blood Elves. Therefore, anyone who wishes to play a standard High Elf with an allegiance to the light need only roll a Blood Elf for that experience.

If that were the case, why isn't also true of the Highmountain Tauren? Or the Dark Iron Dwarves? Or the Lightforged Draenei? Or the Zandalari Trolls? This seems like a malformed argument that presupposes a unique relationship between the Blood Elves and High Elven exiles not extant anywhere else in defiance of the current implementation of Allied Races. Unfortunately, the current canon doesn't make such a presupposition, and the Blood Elves are not so special that no other Thalassian extract is permitted to co-exist with them (a state of affairs that would also deny the Void Elves' existence as a playable race).

However, anyone who claims that it is allegiance to the Alliance which is the defining aspect of what they want to play has the opportunity to play a Void Elf who never became a Blood Elf, who never left the Alliance, whose loyalty to that Alliance was beyond question, who has chosen to become a Void Elf to better serve that Alliance. Rejecting that possibility confirms that allegiance to the Alliance was never the deal-breaker regarding Void Elves, it was a rejection of the Void Elf aesthetic and a desire to duplicate a core Horde race to the Alliance.

I never claimed that, and it is possible (albeit unlikely) that the High Elven exiles could even join the Horde as an Allied Race like their Blood Elven kin depending on the type of story the developers would wish to tell. This would obviously incense some people and make others quite happy.

Void Elves do not. Everything about them is cankered and twisted by their void transformation into something genuinely their own and unique. The origins are there and can be clearly seen, but they are different in a way Alliance High Elves can never hope to be.

I disagree, as has already been explicated.

That presumes there is an impasse. That the small pro High Elf community was upset that the compromise Blizzard came up with is not an impasse. It is an unfortunate but likely expected consequence. Unfortunate in that in an ideal world it would be perfectly possible to please everyone and that is not the case, and expected in that every decision Blizzard makes upsets someone. The people upset were always going to be upset, particularly given that they seemingly define compromise as getting everything they want on this matter with no regards to the opinions of those who wish the factions to remain as distinct as possible and who see the Blood Elves as the true playable High Elves of the franchise.

All the Alliance High Elves becoming Void Elves is the best solution. The likeliest solution is that Blizzard focuses on the Void Elves as the foil for the Blood Elves from now on and slowly forgets that the Alliance High Elves were a thing. One of the weird consequences of the new portal rooms was that Blizzard didn't want to use two portals in the same location going to Dalaran, in the Wrath and Legion timelines, as that clearly would have been too 'on the nose' in exposing the conceit that each continent in the game exists at a different moment in time rather than at a universal moment. Hence, they changed the Legion portal to be in Azsuna rather than to Dalaran again.

Such a decision means it is unlikely we will see Dalaran in the role of shared capital again, something which was probably unlikely anyway but it's an additional drag factor on it's reuse. Far more elegant to craft a new capital to which a direct portal can be attached. And the Silver Covenant is uniquely tied to Dalaran, the expansions involving Dalaran were the ones that saw the most substantial Silver Covenant participation. The fewer opportunities there are to return to Dalaran, the less the Silver Covenant make sense as a storytelling tool. And with the Void Elves already stepping up to be the foil to the Blood Elves, the more redundant the Silver Covenant likely seems.

So there is no impasse. The likeliest outcome is that the Silver Covenant will just be marginalized and the Void Elves used in their place.

Which is precisely what has been happening throughout BFA.

The impasse I'm referring to is internal to this debate and this thread - not the developers and the "Pro community." There are many possible solutions, and the best of which is one that is currently the essence of the debate being had. I think you've prematurely closed the door on a number of fascinating and compelling outcomes out of some form of misplaced protectionism for Blood Elven Horde integrity, but that's just my personal takeaway from your argumentation and it's possibly I've misread you to some degree - but based on what you've said here and before, I think you're trying to close the book on a well-beloved aspect of WoW's lore without real due cause. The Silver Covenant needn't be tied to Dalaran anymore than any group needs to be tied to a specific locale to be relevant. A people are where they stand, after all, not in what temporarily houses them. The Silver Covenant are those High Elves shaped by their exile from Quel'Thalas and their refusal to adopt what they felt were odious methods to deal with their plight stemming from the Third War - they're not citizens of Dalaran specifically, and they don't cease to be the Silver Covenant if they go somewhere else.

Yet Nightborne and Night Elves are as differentiated from each other as Void Elves and Blood/Alliance High Elves are, not as Blood Elves and Alliance High Elves are (which is barely at all). Were Nightborne as close to Night Elves as Alliance High Elves are to Blood Elves, then they would be a bunch of Druids physically indistinguishable from other Night Elves whose sole differentiating factor was an affinity to the Horde.

If Druidism was all that differentiated the Night Elves from other Elves then that would be an argument - but it isn't, and so it's not. Even less so now that the Shen'dralar Highborne have returned to the fold under Tyrande and Malfurion and been accepted into Night Elven society once more.

Instead we have the Nightborne who are physically different from Night Elves in terms of skin colour, hair colour, ear shape and musculature. We have a plausible lore based reason for this differentiation, their ten thousand years of isolation and exposure to the Nightwell.
They are culturally different as well, in that they have preserved the civilization of the now vanished Night Elf empire within Suramar. It was the Night Elves, the physically unchanged Night Elves, who had to create a new culture, yet they had the imperative to do so once it was demonstrated that arcane magic was their ruin and druidism was their future.

Basically they have everything that separates the Void Elves from the Night Elves, which we've already established is enough differentiation to make them an applicable race for playability. This means the High Elven exiles are nearly already there as well, needing only a touch of physical differentiation to quality (to be supplied either by a lore-based transformation or by a soft retcon to their current status).

Void Elves have been physically transformed, albeit at a much faster rate than Nightborne were. And Void Elven culture hasn't been scrapped entirely, it has just been twisted from something recognisable into something pervaded by the void due to the void based transformation.

Both are instances of clear physical and cultural differentiation.

And so their differentiation is not so stark as to make the High Elven exiles exempt from the same essential treatment.

But the Blood Elves have not been physically differentiated. They did not consume fel energy to sate the addiction, they consumed arcane energy. The eye colour change was caused by the presence of the fel crystals scattered throughout Quel'thalas that they sought to use as a tool. And, as I keep mentioning, eye colour is mutable for thalassian elves. It could only be regarded as a differentiating feature if it were permanent. Instead, the golden eyes are now replacing the green eyes for the same reason the green eyes replaced the blue, exposure to that type of magic. Except, as all Elves are connected to the Sunwell (with the likely exception of the Void Elves), all Bloof/Alliance High Elves will probably in the end begin manifesting golden eyes because that is the consequence of a connection to a light based energy source. Whatever destiny the Blood Elves are on due to their reliance on light based magic, the Alliance High Elves are on that ride with them.

Nothing about the Blood Elves needs to be changed, retconned, or expanded upon in this equation. If the High Elven exiles choose a different path for themselves they can certainly do so - like the above possible outcome of severing themselves from the reignited Sunwell to remove the Blood Elves' implied hold over their society, and undergoing changes due to that choice (in the same basic fashion of the Void Elves' adoption of and changes due to Void magic).

I would disagree. Firstly, they have never had a narrative of their own. In WOTLK they were simply the Alliance counterpart to the Sunreavers. In Cata, they sat outside Zul'Aman in a single quest...and I would point out that I think Chronicles confirms it was the Horde that dealt with that issue which means they contributed nothing. In Mists of Pandaria, both the purge and the Isle of Thunder were really Dalaran and Jaina's story rather than the Silver Covenant. I could just as easily argue that the Isle of Thunder was a huge moment in the Sunreaver storyline...despite it clearly being a Blood Elf story in which the Sunreavers were but one component and it was Lor'themar, not Aethas, on whom the Horde plot focused.

The Silver Covenant never had a narrative in WotLK? That's just false on the face of it. Their appearance is Cata was pretty important given the extenuating political ramifications of their presence, in light of their original exile, and the fact that Halduron called them there in violation of Lor'themar's standing edict. The Purge of Dalaran was a huge plot point of MoP and the Silver Covenant very deeply involved in the events - trying to put it all down to Jaina seems like a bad deflection, and the Silver Covenant's actions inform a great deal of Vereesa's arc in "War Crimes" as well. The Isle of Thunder was a huge moment for the Sunreavers on the Horde side as well.

In BFA the Void Elves have been present at the Battle of Lordaeron, their sub-leader is an Alliance follower who paritcipated in the war campaign, and Void Elves have been seen in action (and in full Alliance regalia)in multiple zones. In other words, in BFA the Void Elves are a functioning part of the Alliance. You may argue back that is exactly what the Silver Covenant did in the Isle of Thunder and you would be correct but that was the brief moment when the Silver Covenant, via Dalaran, were an actual part of the Alliance.

I don't really see the relevance of this aside, but I don't disagree. BfA has been a time for the Void Elves to shine, which is understandable as they're a newly-established race actively seeking to make their make within their chosen faction. I don't think it otherwise diminishes the role of the Silver Covenant beforehand in MoP, though. The two things don't intersect in any real way as products of their own specific contexts.

Around the seven minute mark https://www.videogameszone.de/World-...lisch-1110814/

"We've definitely heard player interest in some kind of sub-race system and whether that means brown skinned Orcs or High Elves or...exactly...that could be very cool and something that our artists get very excited about when we talk about"

If you have judged them to have failed because they didn't meet the stated intent, then they have indeed failed. Nowhere is it stated that everything they try has to be a success. Garrisons proved that. But this interview shows that sub-race system began as a response to player feedback rather than a desire to tell different stories. I had hoped it would have been realised as a more comprehensive customization system at the time, but we are where we are. Perhaps telling new stories and seeding new plots became a part of the allied race plan as time went on, but the genesis of the system is easy to find in all the posts for Mechagnomes, brown skinned Orcs and yes, Alliance High Elves.

"Telling new stories and seeding new plots" is pretty much exactly what I think the Allied Race system is all about, and simultaneously why it has failed to provide many of the options people are clambering for. On the heels of that, I also think the developers' statements in this regard are a justification of that choice as opposed to explaining why they opted not to just open up customization more fully and giving the players access to more variants.

As Void Elves proved, there are certain red lines they were ultimately not willing to cross once they sat down and considered their options. Nobody asked for Void Elves, they asked for Alliance High Elves, a request Ion was familiar enough with in 2014 to quote it as an example. But Void Elves were created once they realised Blood Elves were identical to Alliance High Elves.

I agree that was their position, but I disagree that it is ultimately correct and that it is the best outcome in keeping with the canon lore of the game or prior precedent.

Because that is an extremely specific alteration. Why shouldn't Blood Elves have tattoos with Horde motifs? And then racial differentiation is reduced to tattoos. I don't believe this is squarable. The only way to get Alliance High Elves is to make them less like Blood Elves, a LOT less like Blood Elves, because Blood Elves ARE the de facto , gold standard true High Elves of the franchise. But the more you move them away from Blood Elves, who ARE High Elves, the less they are High Elves. Once you reach a point where your Alliance High Elf no longer intrudes on the aesthetic and theme of a Horde race, you end up with an elf that isn't a High Elf. This is what they did with Void Elves and they were rejected by the hardcore of the pro High Elf community for this reason. While they claim to be ok with differentiation, Void Elves proves this isn't the case. They want a High Elf that is different from a Blood Elf but still a High Elf. They want to reinvent the wheel in such a way that it is no longer round.

That is impossible.

Because they don't, currently and moving forward - the Blood Elves have their homeland and their heritage intact, and so they're not really in need of that kind of externally-facing social support or coloration. I agree that playable High Elven exiles need more differentiation for become playable, but I disagree on the exact amount and I think such changes are easily squared within the narrative hooks already existing in the game story. I also disagree with the Blood/High Elf semantics, as previously stated - the Blood Elves changing their own name in light of the outcome of the Third War already underscores the cultural shift between themselves and those who were exiled for not adopting said changes. We already know that the Blood Elves and High Elves use that same difference in terminology within the lore itself, and so continually trying to backpedal from a shift in taxonomy that both groups have already acknowledged just comes across as semantic gymnastics. To put it succinctly: Blood Elves are High Elves, but only up to the point in which they themselves decided to be termed as the Sin'dorei. With that adoption of a change in title, and the High Elven exiles refusal of it, you were left with two different groups who've undergone a cultural divide due to their change in circumstance. The Quel'dorei keeping to what they think is their original heritage, and the Sin'dorei keeping to what they think is their original heritage. They are two discrete groups now, regardless of how similar they might otherwise be. The difference quantifiably exists - it might as well be acknowledged as such.

I actually reached the end. I would ask we try and control these replies, this took a considerable amount of time to write (several sessions across two days in fact) and I think the same is true of your previous responses. For both our sakes we should cut back a little.

A reminder that I should read the whole response before replying. But I agree - these responses take quite awhile to parse and write out. I think we've both pled our cases, as well; and so from here I'll leave it for the other participants to make their own determinations as to agreement or disagreement.

[Black Goat]

Blizzard took the model of Blood Elves and gave it to Alliance thinking they would be happy. But they also didn't want them to be High Elves so they made them the furthest thing from High Elves they could have done. Model wise Void Elves are the closest, in everything else they are the furthest.



As oppose to now when you can't actually play high elves at all?



Eh, not really, tigers and domestic cats cannot produce healthy children, hence they are considered as different species.

I'm sorry, but "Eh, not really." is not enough to dispute scientific fact that a Tiger is a cat. My comment was made to suggest that if this distinction cannot be made, I would not put much faith in that individual's ability to discern the difference between two different races or species, for that matter.

I will not further derail the thread. If you seek more facts on the matter, a simple Google search should suffice to educate you.

[Doffen]

The Void Elves still do use the base Thalassian model, only tinted blue/purple with glowing hair and/or different hair styles (and for some reason a different accent?

I am still wondering about this, why they changed accent. The Void turn you into brits or what?:P I find no logical explanation to this, other than maybe another thing to differentiate them a tad bit more from Blood Elves, but that's kind of far out there as far as reasons go. Though mystical, also kind of hilarious. My all american Blood Elf dipped herself into the Void, then went to Great Britain to study English and took up an accent.

Found an old post of mine:
2018-04-07:

We all knew that the Void was some powerful shit, but turning the Blood Elves into British Elves I didn't see coming. It's kinda funny, and very weird :P

LoL

[Ogren]

I am still wondering about this, why they changed accent. The Void turn you into brits or what?:P I find no logical explanation to this, other than maybe another thing to differentiate them a tad bit more from Blood Elves, but that's kind of far out there as far as reasons go. Though mystical, also kind of hilarious. My all american Blood Elf dipped herself into the Void, then went to Great Britain to study English and took up an accent.

Found an old post of mine:
2018-04-07:

LoL

It's honestly just the females that have a British accent. Some female Night Elf characters like Delaryn had it as well, I think it's just a new actress they hired to do some voices for them.

Kind of annoys me that they don't get genuine Brits for Gilnean and Worgen characters though. IIRC Genn's voice actor actually is British but he hides his accent when voicing the character and I don't get that either.

[Ielenia]

The second possibility is that most of the Kul Tirans who accompanied Daelin either died in the Horde assault on Theramore or, following that attack, were among those who left the city to return to Kul Tiras bearing the Grand Admiral's body back to Boralus. The handful of stubborn survivors who insisted on maintaining Tiragarde Keep on the doorstep of the very center of Horde power haven proven low in number and low in morale. It could be that among these handful of stubborn holdouts, there are simply none of the bigger Kul Tirans remaining as a result of sheer attrition.

This explanation still doesn't work as it's unlikely that all the bigger and tougher Kul'Tirans would leave, and only the "normal' Kul'Tirans remain behind, as the lore of Kul'Tiras shown in the game display no schism at all between the burlier Kul'Tirans and the other Kul'Tirans, at all, and they're shown as a hardy group, so "leaving behind" doesn't really sound like the Kul'Tirans.

[FlubberPuddy]

Because, as described above, the real litmus test of differentiation is for Alliance High Elves specifically is 'can they be differentiated from Blood Elves in a way that should not be available to Blood Elf players?'.

Answer to this would be yes, because a lot of High Elven identification is the OPPOSITE of what Blood Elven identification is. Again, one of the words used to describe Blood Elves was "majestic". From continued participation in this discussion there is nothing "majestic" about High Elves. They have no lands, they're a minority, they assimilate with other cultures. Even their NPC Speech isn't the same as Blood Elves to equate how different in personality they are.

They dress themselves up in Silver/Blue/Brown colors very much antagonistic to the Gold/Red/Greens of Quel'thalas and Blood Elves. Blood Elves themselves think to be above most races, the High Elves on Alliance do not by virtue of assimilating to many different cultures like Humans, Draenei, and Dwarves.

I mean heck, even in BFA one of the High Elf representatives (Frostfencer Seraphi) doesn't wear a shirt for goodness sake and the rest of his clothing is mere rabble. Unlike the very fancily robed/armored Blood Elven Team. Even the Void Elf team themselves are very elaborate compared to Seraphi.

You talk about what can't be available to Blood Elven players, that's as easy as how only Moose Antlers aren't available to Mulgore Tauren but nothing stops a Mulgore Tauren from having the same furs, tattoos, faces, etc. What this means is that per precedent there need only be ONE differentiating factor and by example of Highmountain Tauren and Mulgore Tauren, and Lightforged Draenei and Draenei it need not be skin color (as both Allied Races here have skin tones available to their Parent races in some fashion).

Then for High Elves the only differentiating factor need only be one of the following: Tattoos, Feathery hairstyles/adornments, Their non-glowy eyes, a beefier build.

Hypothetically, we could encounter a lost tribe of thalssian elves whose isolation has caused them to become considerably taller and much more muscular than a standard thalassian elf. As they would not be encumbered by our prior knowledge of them, such a thing would be acceptable using the Kul Tiran precedent. But we know where Alliance High Elves come from, they are political exiles from Silvermoon. As they come from Silvermoon, it is highly implausible to argue that there was a one to one correlation between the political/philosophical opinion that led to their exile and this hypothetical physical differentiation that could retroactively be applied to all Alliance High Elves and not be available to Blood Elves.

Just because High Elves originated from Silvermoon doesn't mean we can't find High Elves from elsewhere that have differentiated due to the environment they're in. This is how Mag'har came to be, we first are exposed to them on Outland aka Broken Draenor, that doesn't mean we must receive the Mag'har from that moment (we in fact received Mag'har from before that moment even occurs).

The issue with a lot of your arguments is that you attempt to apply "rules" to why High Elves as if they are rules that must be applied to Allied Races and when we attempt to employ those "rules" to existing Allied Races it very easy to see how those "rules don't apply.

This is the same rationale I used when some suggested that Alliance High Elves could be differentiated by giving them darker skin colours than the Blood Elves in that I argued that such skin colours would also need to be available to Blood Elves...and that there were extremly troubling connotations of the suggestion that the fair skinned Blood Elves happened to exile everyone with darker skins from Silvermoon for being 'troublesome'.

I would actually say it is a more troubling connotation that it appears "the white skin elves" must be the ONLY white skin elves in the game and that we apparently aren't allowed to have others with similar skin tones as the reasoning seems to imply "it will make the white skin elves feel less special" yet the same concern doesn't appear to hold with non-white skin tone elves (aka blue/purple elves).

[Beloren]

I never claimed that, and it is possible (albeit unlikely) that the High Elven exiles could even join the Horde as an Allied Race like their Blood Elven kin depending on the type of story the developers would wish to tell. This would obviously incense some people and make others quite happy..

Wanna bet if the factions are being merged or disbanding like one of the leaks suggests might happen, that the high elves becoming a faction dwelling with the blood elves wouldn't upset anyone.

It is only a problem because of the horde/alliance divide. It is the same with the nightborne and all the night elf posts on identity, without the horde/alliance divide, you could easily see the night/nightborne elf interactions and collaborations that dominated 7.0 grow again. Not to mention a whole host of other race interactions.

The most welcomed would be high and blood elf possibilities, as well as night and nightborne elf possibilities imo.

- - - Updated - - -

I am still wondering about this, why they changed accent. The Void turn you into brits or what?:P I find no logical explanation to this, other than maybe another thing to differentiate them a tad bit more from Blood Elves, but that's kind of far out there as far as reasons go. Though mystical, also kind of hilarious. My all american Blood Elf dipped herself into the Void, then went to Great Britain to study English and took up an accent.

Found an old post of mine:
2018-04-07:

LoL

This has happened with the elves. All of them. Void elves and Nightborne sound very similar, many new night elf voices are british sounding, some new ones are not. this does make sense as the elves themeselves have very many sub-regions and enough itme for accennts tto change or be influenced (from a lore perspective.)

[Ielenia]

Except Kul Tirans and High Elves are not equivalent. As established, there are several rationales as to why Kul Tirans could look different from the Human standard. It COULD be Drust blood or it could be a feature brought about their relative isolation. Neither of this explanations applies to the High Elves.

High elves were never around the Drust nor isolated themselves, so I don't know how those would apply either. However, there are a myriad of other possible, lore-friendly explanations to give high elves a different build. A handful of them were already offered to you.

[Directionalk9]

Just checking in, has anyone flipped sides yet?

[Melsiren]

Just checking in, has anyone flipped sides yet?

You're funny.

[Aucald]

I am still wondering about this, why they changed accent. The Void turn you into brits or what?:P I find no logical explanation to this, other than maybe another thing to differentiate them a tad bit more from Blood Elves, but that's kind of far out there as far as reasons go. Though mystical, also kind of hilarious. My all american Blood Elf dipped herself into the Void, then went to Great Britain to study English and took up an accent.

I assume it's mostly just because they wanted further differentiation, although it is admittedly humorous. I suppose a lore-related reasoning could be that Umbric's followers all hail from a given Highborne house who share in that accent - or perhaps the Void-induced insanity included a change of accent for reasons known only to the Void?

- - - Updated - - -

Wanna bet if the factions are being merged or disbanding like one of the leaks suggests might happen, that the high elves becoming a faction dwelling with the blood elves wouldn't upset anyone.

It is only a problem because of the horde/alliance divide. It is the same with the nightborne and all the night elf posts on identity, without the horde/alliance divide, you could easily see the night/nightborne elf interactions and collaborations that dominated 7.0 grow again. Not to mention a whole host of other race interactions.

The most welcomed would be high and blood elf possibilities, as well as night and nightborne elf possibilities imo.

I imagine for some people it might cease to be an issue - likely Horde or Alliance partisans opposed to it for whatever reason. Though for some who hold racial identity in WoW as paramount it might still be an issue. I'm not a huge proponent of faction merging myself, despite my issues with the faction conflict as a whole I think the Alliance/Horde dichotomy is rather central to Warcraft as a universe and that without it something intrinsic to the story is lost. How to navigate around that, though, is anyone's guess.

[Aldo Hawk]

You talk about what can't be available to Blood Elven players, that's as easy as how only Moose Antlers aren't available to Mulgore Tauren but nothing stops a Mulgore Tauren from having the same furs, tattoos, faces, etc. What this means is that per precedent there need only be ONE differentiating factor and by example of Highmountain Tauren and Mulgore Tauren, and Lightforged Draenei and Draenei it need not be skin color (as both Allied Races here have skin tones available to their Parent races in some fashion).

If we were cursed into sticking with the seemingly logical path of Kai a Mulgore Tauren should never receive any kind of blessing from Cenarius, as that would be a cruel way of creating a personality disorder or something...

Highmountain Tauren are just Tauren that got their antlers as heritage from their common ancestor, Huln Highmountain. A Tauren from Mulgore can also be blessed by Cenarius and get that physical change. Is that going to make them change their roots as Tauren from Mulgore to Tauren from Highmountain?

Of course not, Highmountain Tauren are just another kind of Tauren, not that far away from their cousins from Kalimdor even in culture if you ask me, they just had a different environment and different actors in their story, however it's a pretty much classical Tauren story. The Warhorn tribe would have been much more different, and they also align very well with a Mulgore counterpart, the Grimtotem.

Now THAT is enough for an Allied race, a -comparatively- small aesthetic feature that could or could not be replicated, but not necessarily being something an already playable race would necessarily go after, as face painting, like Highmountain Tauren have while Mulgore Tauren don't (would be nice for them to also have in my opinion).

We have the High elves, not affected by Fel which just by that fact could totally be physically modified in any sort of way through a retroactive revision. And we also have the fact that they are not connected to the Sunwell in the same way, given they have never harmonized with the essence of M'uru, resulting on not being able to use the light energies of the Sunwell. That can also be another retroactive revision on their aesthetic. And whatnot, they can also have different physical appearance due to their different relationship with magic and the Sunwell unlike Blood elves. And in a final example, aesthetic differences pushed through a necessity of differentiating from the Blood elves.

As for story goes, they have already differentiated themselves from the Blood elves by living different lives in different places and doing different things with these lives.

Simply put, the only thing that is left for High elves is being revisited to develop on their own concept and/or becoming playable, as they have proven to be more than a valid candidate and if there is a concern about aesthetics, there are ways to go around that without transforming High elves into something that is not a High elf, as Void elves are (And yes, Void elves are a form of High elf, that simply doesn't make them the High elves we are talking about, even if they come from transformed High elves).

Also, food for thought, if the question "Are High elves more plausible than (race you personally don't like and/or is lore unfriendly) for an allied race?" Starts any series of thoughts to still go against the High elves, you should simply quit the discussion as the bias and antagonizing behavior is simply too strong to discuss anything in good faith and/or with any kind of respect to logic and/or the intelligence of others.

Also... Half-Elves a plausible Allied race? Is this some kind of a joke? Is -anyone- aware that Half-Elves are effectively applied to the population argument? Can anyone please cite me all the Half-Elves that existed? And I mean all because they are so few that someone with previous knowledge about sources could bring them in less than two minutes of searching. And I'm asking for ALL OF THEM, EVEN THE DEAD ONES, EVEN THE NON-CANONICAL ONES.

Dammit, this thread has been on hold by anti High elf bias for too long, too damn long, of fucking course it has become cyclical, it's always retorting the same non-ground and inconsequential points against High elves instead of actually -talking- about them and developing new ideas together.

I have to necessarily give my gratitude to @Aucald for putting the time on responding to Kai. However, it's the exact same points me and others have been defending for almost a year, not any point is new, and everyone can take a look and see the results of that. That, as I said in the previous paragraph and many times during the thread's lifetime up to a point, is a downward spiral of inconsequential and non-grounded arguments.

May this could change? I don't know, it would be fantastical, however Kai doesn't seem to follow the philosophy of "Live and let live", which would be very handy because as Doffen pointed out, he is using the thread as some sort of personal blog, capitalizing the discussion in a way that not even much different people on the other side of the argument come anymore, and that's a shame in my book.

Well, at least this thread helped me to polish my English, just go back and look at my earlier posts, damn it's pretty good for someone who didn't had English teachers and didn't learn from regulated education. Goddamn I'm gonna put a pizza in the oven to celebrate.

I don't even know if I want to continue engaging in this thread, I don't even want High elves to play them myself, I'm super happy with my Blood elves, but the simple fact that something so straightforward and asked out of pure love for the game and it's lore is getting such kind of opposition just drags me back in... Though that is enough for me to stay LoL.

[Ielenia]

Also unsubstantiated by any form of canon lore. Elisande could've just been referring to their closeness to Humanity, or specifically to Alleria's relationship with Rhonin specifically (as she is the only known High Elven exile to have given birth to Half-elven children).

I think you have two couples mixed up, here. Alleria had a son with Turalyon: Arator the Redeemer. Meanwhile, Veressa had children with Rhonin. So it's two instances of high elves having children with humans.